SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
meat industry
'People Need to Go to Jail for This Sh*t': Video Shows How US Meat Industry Colludes to Boost Prices
"This is probably one of the top five food scandals of the 21st Century," a former grocery industry executive told More Perfect Union.
Aug 21, 2024
A former grocery executive told a progressive media outlet in a video released Tuesday that "people fucking need to go to jail" over a long-running scheme in which dominant U.S. meat industry players have used information provided by a little-known data analytics company to increase prices and pad their bottom lines.
"This is probably one of the top five food scandals of the 21st Century, and we can't underplay it," said Errol Schweizer, the former vice president of Whole Foods' grocery division. "People need to go to jail for this shit."
Schweizer's comments come at the start of a nine-minute video produced by More Perfect Union, which tells the story of how Indiana-based Agri Stats, the seemingly bland data firm, "built a network used by the nation's largest meat companies," including Tyson Foods, Hormel, and Cargill.
"Inside that network, America's meat barons share secret data," says More Perfect Union's Eric Gardner, the video's narrator. "It's alleged that Agri Stats organizes and then launders that information across the industry. Companies weaponize it, restricting output, manipulating the market, ultimately raising your prices."
Watch the full video:
Last September, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust suit against Agri Stats for allegedly "organizing and managing anticompetitive information exchanges among broiler chicken, pork, and turkey processors."
"The complaint alleges that Agri Stats violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by collecting, integrating, and distributing competitively sensitive information related to price, cost, and output among competing meat processors," the DOJ said. "This conduct harms customers, including grocery stores and American families."
Less than two months later, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison led a bipartisan coalition of states in joining the Justice Department's lawsuit, which Agri Stats tried unsuccessfully to dismiss earlier this year.
Ellison told More Perfect Union that while an update to U.S. antitrust laws is long-overdue, "the Sherman Act, passed in 1890, is enough to stop Agri Stats from this illegal information-sharing that it's doing."
"I want to get to trial on this fast," said Ellison. "I believe we've got a great case, and I believe that what we're fighting for is a fair economy so that all Americans can aspire to prosperity."
More Perfect Union released its video days after Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris proposed a first-of-its-kind federal ban on price gouging in the food and grocery sectors and called for new rules to "make clear that big corporations can't unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive profits."
The meat industry was among the corporate forces that pushed back on Harris' proposed price gouging ban. Julie Anna Potts, president and CEO of the Meat Institute—a lobbying group for the meatpacking industry—accused the Harris campaign of "unfairly" targeting the meat and poultry industry.
While Potts said that "avian influenza, a shortage of beef cattle, and high input prices like energy and labor are all factors that determine prices at the meat case," Tyson, Cargill, JBS S.A., and National Beef are each facing lawsuits accusing them of illegally colluding to fix prices.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Scientists, Groups to USDA: Stop Ignoring Climate Threat of Meat and Dairy
"Secretary Vilsack can't keep his head in the sand anymore, because this letter delivers the message loud and clear," said a Center for Biological Diversity campaigner.
Jan 11, 2024
More than 250 advocacy groups, scientists, and other experts on Thursday urged U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to "stop disregarding the science on the climate cost of meat and dairy in high-consuming countries like the United States, and advancing the industries that are driving agricultural emissions."
The coalition's letter—spearheaded by the Center for Biological Diversity—came after Vilsack attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) last month and was asked if he was hearing about cutting meat consumption as a climate solution.
According toPolitico, Vilsack responded that "I don't hear much about that," but "I did hear about the important role that strategies for methane reduction could play in making the current livestock industry more sustainable."
"We have to address our meat-heavy diets now, or the climate emergency will force us to."
The letter pushes back, highlighting that "in addition to numerous panels discussing this topic at COP28, the United States joined more than 150 nations in signing the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action."
"Furthermore, during the first-ever Food, Agriculture, and Water Day at COP, which you personally attended, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization launched a highly publicized roadmap to align food systems with the Paris agreement," the letter adds. "The FAO roadmap specifically identifies the inclusion of environmental considerations in national dietary guidelines as well as the importance of improving school food and public procurement programs as effective government actions."
Despite industry pressure, the meat and dairy sector's contributions to the climate emergency as well as the related crises of the accelerated spread of disease, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and water pollution were documented and acknowledged by scientists, campaigners, and governments long before COP28—which was flooded by lobbyists for not only fossil fuel giants but also Big Ag.
As the letter details:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change not only identified dietary shifts, including meat reduction, as a vital climate mitigation strategy needed to meet the urgent emissions-reduction targets but emphasized the urgency to act. Research has shown that even if the energy sector immediately became climate-neutral, we still would not be able to achieve the reductions necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change without reducing meat and dairy consumption.
Additionally, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for the Conference on Biodiversity reaffirms the need to reduce animal protein under Target 16. Reducing animal protein is specifically named in the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Global Species Action Plan to achieve the Kunming-Montreal goals. Studies show that climate and biodiversity action must be aligned and failing to do so impedes our ability to address either crisis and further threatens food security.
"The science shows sustainable dietary shifts are key in high-consuming nations like the United States. Changes to production alone are not enough," the letter asserts. "The United States must take a leading role in reducing food system emissions with strategies that address both production and consumption of animal-based foods."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture "has repeatedly been urged by scientists (including its own scientific advisory committees), environmental experts, and public health advocates over the past decade to address excessive meat and dairy consumption in food and nutrition policy," the coalition wrote to Vilsack. "Under your leadership, the USDA has instead relied on false solutions such as feed additives, which have minimal impact in reducing emissions and aren't scalable, and biogas, which worsens the problem of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions."
The groups have three key demands for the USDA chief:
- Immediately make meat and dairy reduction a key part of USDA's climate strategy by acknowledging the role of consumption in climate mitigation and identifying opportunities to support and incentivize dietary shifts;
- Align food and climate goals in all USDA programs and policies, including by increasing access to healthy, plant-based foods in the school meal program; and
- Integrate sustainability into the Dietary Guidelines for Americans with an emphasis on plant-forward dietary patterns.
"Secretary Vilsack can't keep his head in the sand anymore, because this letter delivers the message loud and clear," said Jennifer Molidor, a senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. "We have to address our meat-heavy diets now, or the climate emergency will force us to."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Big Ag Shouldn’t Get to Dominate the Food Discussion at COP28
Agribusiness corporations that wield outsized power in the food system are using the exact same playbook as the oil and gas industry to delay meaningful action.
Dec 08, 2023
If you haven’t been following food and agriculture developments at COP28, then you might not know that this year’s COP has been dubbed as the first “Food COP.”
Food systems are responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and they are rarely subjected to scrutiny. But food-related emissions are finally under the spotlight at the annual climate negotiations, to complement actions on the much-needed fossil fuel phaseout.
A quick snapshot: 57% of GHGs associated with agricultural production are caused by animal farming. Livestock production accounts for roughly 32% of methane emissions, a “superheater” greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. Reducing it in the next seven years gives us a real chance at slowing down and limiting climate chaos.
It is mind-boggling that the fate of food could be controlled so profoundly by corporate actors.
So you would think that meat and dairy companies that drive these emissions on an industrial scale should be feeling the heat at the “Food COP.” Instead, they’re being given the main stage to lay out how they should be allowed to continue their harmful activities.
How Big Ag Works at COP
Multilateral meetings like the COP are increasingly infiltrated by corporate interests showcasing high profile announcements and climate initiatives at side meetings rife with greenwashing. This trend is justified by “multistakeholderism,” an approach to policymaking that allows companies to participate in decision-making processes, even when conflicts of interest arise between climate action and corporate profits. The scope of solutions is as a result inevitably narrowed toward market-friendly interventions and voluntary initiatives rather than robust measures that involve state regulations.
The oil and gas industry has been widely documented using this tactic through infiltrating climate meetings, ultimately trying to steer the global community away from meaningful action. Big Ag (big agribusiness corporations that wield outsized power in the food system) is using the exact same playbook. At COP28, agribusinesses are going all out to dominate the narratives on food systems transition. Multinational food corporations are headlining at numerous events, sponsoring pavilions, and even working in close partnership with the COP28 Presidency’s Agenda on Food Systems. Their motto seems to be, the more in the spotlight the better.
The solutions they promote mostly focus on boosting carbon sequestration through ‘regenerative agriculture’ and enhancing farming innovation for greater efficiency. None of these approaches would require a reduction in production levels, none of them calls into question Big Ag’s flawed model of industrial agriculture that is failing our global food system.
The “Food COP” rightly puts the spotlight on the link between food production and the climate. But it’s unthinkable that the biggest emitters in that sector, hiding in plain sight, get to run the show. Some of the companies involved are part of a cluster of 15 meat and dairy companies which together are estimated to have a methane footprint as large as Russia, Canada, Australia, and Germany.
Although food system transition is not part of the negotiations this year, the space given to Big Ag’s narrative on food systems pretty much everywhere else (especially in comparison to the space given to small farmholders, fisherfolks, and Indigenous peoples) means that they will dominate the narrative on solutions to food system emissions. We must not allow this to happen.
The Action We Need
The fact that big agribusinesses are controlling the narrative at COP does not mean it’s game over. Once international climate conferences end, politicians go home, and that’s when the real work on food systems begins.
For this commitment to become a reality, leaders must go beyond the rhetoric of Big Ag and plan a just transition that takes account of the food system as a whole. Governments must also include civil society organisations, consumer groups, Indigenous peoples, scientists, and, of course, farmers, in order to chart a course away from climate-wrecking industrial agriculture.
Decision-makers need to adopt ambitious solutions and set themselves specific targets for different GHGs, such as methane or nitrous oxide. One essential starting point is to halt the expansion of new animal factory farms. Where there are patterns of overconsumption of meat and dairy products (predominantly in the Global North), countries need to shape food environments to encourage large segments of the population to change to diets that include more plant-based food and less animal protein. This should go hand-in-hand with concrete plans for a just transition for farmers trapped in an exploitative relationship with Big Livestock, through shifting subsidies to support a transition towards agroecological farming practices so as to move away from intensive livestock rearing in giant factory farms. We need vibrant rural communities with more farms and less livestock to benefit biodiversity and the climate.
It is mind-boggling that the fate of food could be controlled so profoundly by corporate actors. The way we produce food affects us all, and we can’t let solutions proposed behind closed doors dictate how we nourish ourselves and what we put on our tables.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular